BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

By Lisa Wangsness
| Globe Staff
April 13, 2013

Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley to a panel of nine prelates from around the world who will advise him on reforming governance of the church.

The Vatican’s announcement on Saturday, exactly one month after Francis’s election, sends a strong signal that the new pope hopes to confront the problems within the curia, or Vatican bureaucracy, that distracted and embarrassed his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.

It also suggests he may intend to address bishops’ longstanding complaints that power in the Catholic church has become too centralized in Rome, analysts said.

“The election of Francis was in part a vote to shake things up, and this would be first concrete indication that might actually happen,” said John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter.

He called the appointment of O’Malley “an…